Pieces

I'm eating blueberry ice cream instead of drinking wine right now. The wine will come later. A couple hours ago, when I showed up at home with some take-out pizza, my dad said, "Shall I get some cold beer to go with it?" And he took out a six-pack of Bud and I smiled inside.

Today was a very long day, largely spent at the hospital. My mom's oncologist suggested what I had thought--that, maybe, the mets in my mom's lungs are making it difficult for her to breathe. Of course, he danced around the subject ... and ended with a "CHEMO, CHEMO, CHEMO" cheer.

About an hour later, a pulmonologist came by and explained that it's not just her lungs, but something is happening with her heart. Because my mom has no history of cardiovascular problems whatsoever, his theory is that the toxins from the chemo (recent or six years' worth, who knows ...) have damaged her heart. You hear that a lot, right?--if the cancer doesn't get you, the chemo will.

They've given her an inhaler to help open up her bronchial passages whenever she feels short of breath. And, likely, when they send her home next time (we're not sure, yet, when), it will be with an oxygen tank. The word "pneumonia" also came up today ... in passing ... and, I think, in a precautionary kind of way. The nurses are monitoring her vitals very closely.

It feels, lately, like too much talk. Too much talk. Was it just a couple weeks ago that I was writing about her liver and her albumin levels? NONE of that has come up. NONE of it. When I was sitting with my mom today, she said, "They all said that the liver would get worse before the lungs."

My aunt told me that when my mom went to the ER the time before this (when I was back in Seattle), they ran into the husband of one of my mom's former patients--a fireman--at the entrance. My mom hid her face--embarrassed by the way she looked. But he said to her, "How are you, gorgeous?" (Apparently, he always called her and my aunt "the two gorgeouses.") And my mom started crying, and he started crying, and he pulled out photos of his children from his wallet to show to the nurses and said, "She delivered all of my children."

And I don't know what to do about the fact that I'm wishing for things that can NEVER happen anymore. Like even one more trip to the fucking zoo. And so we move onto the wine.